How Six Classrooms 300 Miles Apart Connected Their Learning One WILD Day!

"And when he came to the place where the wild things are they roared their terrible roars and gnashed their terrible teeth and rolled their terrible eyes and showed their terrible claws till Max said "BE STILL" and tamed them with the magic trick."

Last week from inside the walls of Van Meter and Merton schools, the kindergarten, second, and third graders GOT WILD with their new friends.

As I watched the teachers from Merton read Where the Wild Things Are , it was fun to watch the excitement from the children as they acted out the story. And they weren't only reading together, they were also learning together.

When Merton second grade teacher Corinne Meissner read the book, she would stop and talk about vocabulary that might be new to the students. She not only called on students within her classroom, but also called upon the students from Van Meter. As Corinne talked about these words, Mindy Doggett, second grade teacher from Van Meter, wrote the words "Mischief, Gnashed, Rumpus" on the white board as they discussed what these words met as a connected classroom over 300 miles apart.

The connections and learning between these classrooms didn't stop there.

All of the students then created their own WILD THING in the computer lab using the Web 2.0 tool Build Your Wild Self.
They had so much fun making themselves wild and reading the description of their new creations.

As a way to share these creations with their new friends and others, we took their Wild Things are turned them into a slideshow.

And as the children in Van Meter, Iowa and Merton, Wisconsin watch their Wild Things slideshows I know that they will smile and think about the first time they met new friends and made connections with others in a different place.

This is the only beginning and what a great place to start.

Sendak, Maurice. Where the Wild Things Are. 1963.